THE SHAWCROSS REDEMPTION?
One violent lunge. A scream. Tears. Angry voices. And a quick departure in the back of a van driven by one of the three main emergency services. The Fiver's usual Saturday night out at Whispaz nite spot (no jeans, no trainers, no boot-cut slacks, no slack-cut boots, no young slim people, no not smelling faintly of cat food) left plenty of time for thought this weekend.Thrashing about in the communal lower bunk of its comfortable five-man holding cell, the Fiver was able to consider the major events of the weekend, mainly the tackle by Ryan Shawcross on Aaron Ramsey that snapped his tibia like a slightly stale breadstick in a depressing backstreet Italian restaurant. In particular, the Fiver's thoughts turned towards the question that seemed to be on everyone's lips. Is Shawcross really, really – is he really? - that kind of player?
He may have snapped both bones in Ramsey's leg through sheer brute force. But is that really him? Or does he occupy that place where you can go in between guilty and innocent, a kind of footballing Switzerland, a comfortable holding camp perhaps on the banks of a lake, for people who aren't that type of player despite having been that type of player for the half-second it takes to be that kind of player?
Fortunately, Wayne Rooney has joined the debate. "I was with him at United for a couple of years and he's not that type of player," Rooney said, sitting in front of some adverts at an England press thing. It's a view shared by Rory Delap, who also isn't that type of player: "I know Ryan and he wouldn't mean to do that," Delap explained today. "He is not a lad who would go out to do that."
So, there you have it. Consolation no doubt for Ramsey as he spends the next three months hobbling around in a cast with a dirty sock on the end and the words "Every journey has a beginning and an end and a middle bit and we walk these paths for a reason that lies beyond our paths of reason and that's the reason everything has a reason, luv Sol xxx" written in biro.
Ramsey can at least tell himself that none of this really happened. That his leg just isn't the being-snapped-in-half type. That Shawcross is only the type of player who does that kind of thing when he actually is doing that type of thing. And that while the Fiver may subscribe to the view of ancient Greek thinker Pindar that who you are is defined by what you do, this rule - unlike the rules of energy and resistance and unstoppable force meeting chalky, breakable object - doesn't seem to apply in football.
